…Or Training Myself to Grow Where I’m Planted.

In the wilting swamp of summer, with depression and agitation kicking up a Pig Pen Black Cloud, I found myself hating Oklahoma. What I gained by moving seemed minuscule compared to what I’d lost.

Thankfully, I’ve done this work long enough to know I was not seeing the whole picture. I needed clarity. I needed objectivity. I needed to turn the Bipolar Bus around.

So, I started my Anti-Hate Campaign.

I pulled out a blank journal and started making A Plan—to be specific, to separate my “hates” into piles, and to brainstorm ideas on how to make changes. I approached this journal like any other, painting and collaging the pages with care, using colors I love, letting the art of the process lead me. Loving the journal itself encouraged me to pick it up and tackle the next phase.

I found that most of the “hates” I labeled unmanageable carried some seed of change, either in my perception or in a sideways action. The state’s poverty and poor education system overwhelmed me, so I noodled about becoming more informed about specific problems. I subscribed to the Tulsa World and looked for speaker forums to attend. As other ideas come, into the journal they go.

The cooler weather brought all kinds of physical and mental relief. I came back to ideas I’d had in April about making my duplex into a place of sanctuary and inspiration. I rearranged my sitting room, painted and hung a screen door to be used as an Idea/Celebration Board, and found the perfect, Feng Shui-enhancing poster of Wonder Woman.

Outside, I asked permission to create a rock garden between the edge of my cement patio and the privacy wall. I spent a satisfying day leveling ground and hauling rock, then sitting in my sister’s borrowed patio chair to enjoy the breeze and my handiwork. Artful doo-dads and whirligigs will be added in due time.

Because of my journal and texts with my friend, Cheryl, I realized that hating where I live is just another bipolar symptom. Anger, agitation and loathing rise up and attach themselves to whatever is handy. An unfamiliar, uncomfortable place is a perfect target. As I continue to do this Work of shifting perception and turning toward joy, I will learn to recognize that symptom sooner and take steps to be gentle with it.

This is my work today: To start finding ways to love living in Oklahoma instead of hating it. I know there’s a way to do it. Or ways. I might need help, so if anyone has ideas—trite, condescending, stupid-sounding—I want to hear them. They will make me mad. I won’t want to listen. I will clutch my perceived Truths until my fingers bleed. And I need to let go if I’m going to survive.

I don’t just want to survive. I want to thrive. How do I do that when I’m filled with loathing? Well, I can’t. I need to find the drain plug on all the disappointment, judgment, rage and hopelessness. Fast. I need a brand new perspective, one that hasn’t occurred to me yet. One the Bipolar Badass never imagined.

This is what I will do today:

•Make a list of what I hate most and decide if those things are manageable or not. If they are, I can brainstorm another list on how to change them. If they aren’t, I must find a way to manage me.

•At the same time, focus on what I love and am grateful for. A new art journal spread is calling.

•Start re-reading Radical Acceptance as this book opened me to accepting myself. I know there are other treasures there.

•Manage my illness. There are things other than art that make my bipolarness easier. I need to identify them and gently reincorporate them until they become routine again.

This is a lot. Maybe too much to begin with. But, today I will start.

I’ve always said that Life is an Adventure. I want to come back to that perspective, and to find the next outgrowth of that perspective. What is the next thing? I will search and listen, be active and be quiet, breathe and wait. I’ll find it.

It feels like I haven’t blogged in a long time, but I see that’s just not true (Hello, distorted thinking!). Maybe the disconnect comes from playing Marco Polo with some of my friends back in Iowa and Minnesota. If you’re not familiar, MP is a messaging app that creates little videos. It was my friend, Cheryl’s, genius idea to use it, so that we could see and hear each other while giving updates.

I’ve taken my buddies to the Flea Market and introduced them to the baristas at my new coffee shop-home. They’ve toured my duplex and The Peach Barn (Fried Pies!). Most importantly, I’ve shared the ups and downs of my illness as my rheostats rebooted after the electrical surge of moving. That’s something I’ve only done here in my blog, where words can be safely crafted and kept separate from a voice and face that feel too vulnerable to share.

In real-time, I try not to unload when my moods deep-cycle. I might mention it in passing, or say “I’m having a hard day.” Right or wrong, I believe too much truth will break the people I love. And I can’t bear the uncomfortable silence or awkward attempts at sympathy that usually follow.

But, I needed support. I needed to be real. So, there were blubbery posts, and manic posts, and little videos where I looked and sounded like a zombie. No one ran screaming into the night. No one shamed me. In fact, the love and support that flowed back to me helped more than I can say. I thank my friends for that. Thank you, guys.

It’s still weird, living here on the Moon, where huge fireworks displays light up every front yard on the Fourth of July, and fried bologna sandwiches are a restaurant menu item. But, when I wake in the morning, and the first thought that floats up out of the dark is I’ve made a huge mistake, I can gather more and more evidence to the contrary and send that distorted thought packing. It still has to shuffle off into 100 degree and 90-something percent humidity, but shuffle off it does. All I need do is shut the door and whisper, …Polo.

Planning is part of my DNA. Knowing a plan is just the tip of an iceberg was something I had to learn.

As I waited this past winter to move from Iowa to Oklahoma, I tried to imagine what difficulties might be in store. I knew leaving my therapist and managing without one for a while (I finally meet her this week) meant working as many Tools as I could, including complete acceptance of where ever I landed on the bipolar scale each day. I expected leaving my friends and UU church community might stir up some ancient loneliness and tendencies to isolate. I imagined the culture of the Plains might take some getting used to, or that the food might be a little different. I wondered if living closer to family would challenge my communication skills, my boundaries or shake up what I’ve come to consider my limitations.

What never even crossed my mind was the weather.

I knew it got hot here in the summer, but I was not ready for 95 degrees and 96% humidity the first week of May.

It stupefied me. The humidity seeped into the crevices of my skull and expanded like Gorilla Glue.

My nephew, the rancher, gave me lots of good advice: Get any running around done in the morning, then high-tail it home to air conditioning for the rest of the day. I told him I must be losing weight with all the puddles of sweat in my shoes and no appetite. He said he thought the same thing when he moved here back in his college days, but it never did work that way.

Well, shoot.

Now, Iowa can be hot and humid. In fact, my friends tell me it is right now. But, I don’t ever remember opening my front door at 7:00 in the morning and walking into a swampy cement wall. It takes a moment or two to find the air and pull it into my lungs. I feel like Ed Harris in The Abyss.

I can’t tell if my depression is worse because of the weather, or if it’s the normal run of my rapid cycling doing its thing. I know I’m bored with my own whingeing and try to keep my mouth shut. I must say it does help to hear locals complain and that the weather service issued a heat advisory yesterday. It’s not just me, then, being a weenie.

Knowing my A/C will be on until October makes me worry about my expanding carbon footprint. To that end, I’m determined to recycle and to look at other ways I can assuage my environmental guilt.

As a liberal Northerner, I have some preconceived beliefs about the South. When I started looking at them, I realized I needed to bring all of the ugliness into the Light if I was to be happy there. It was uncomfortable work. I know enough about belief and selective perception that this work will be ongoing—to be mindful of looking for evidence that supports what I already believe and ignoring evidence to the contrary. I want to be open to the beauty, the charm, the kindness and good manners of Oklahoma. I want to love it there.

My sister and I started talking about it when I visited her there over Christmas. We let it sit a while to see if it was just holiday cheer and wishful thinking, then decided the plan had legs. What really put shoes on those legs, though, was my brother’s offer to support me enough to live somewhere other than subsidized housing.

It’s been a shock, really, to be given this unconditional support, to know that my siblings are with me, to come to understand that I am not alone. We didn’t grow up this way, you see. Grand generosity was never our family’s forté. Small gifts, yes. Limited support with strings, yes. Pull up your big girl panties and stand on your own two feet lectures, yes. This level of largess requires a complete brain dump and reboot. What I thought I knew as truth isn’t.

I’m also struggling with the urge to hide in my apartment until it’s time to move. I can feel myself disengaging from my life here, from both difficult and delightful relationships, from the activities that fill this life. All the reasons I want and need to leave this place rear up like trained elephants, trumpeting and rolling wild eyes at me.

But I have a trip to Taos at the end of February, to make art with friends and breathe in the mountains of the West. I want to enjoy that trip. And I know I will need time afterward for my brain to do what it does with change and stress. It will be well into spring before I leave this little apartment that I’ve worked so hard to make into a Nest. I need to stay present and grounded in now, take care of my friendships, do the work in front of me each day.

In the meantime, my sister is in High Research Mode, talking to her realtor friends and sussing out neighborhoods. In a month or so, she’ll start looking at places for me to rent. She has my Must Have list (I have several lists going—that’s one way to keep the Greener Pastures Gremlins from taking over).

Transition is always a challenge, as is stress. Even good stress. So, while I do the work in front of me, I must also Do My Work. Be kind, gentle and generous with myself. Allow the terrified elephants a chance to walk on four feet and sing themselves to sleep.